Correct me if I am wrong here, but museums are supposed to be about history, correct? History meaning the facts of historical events which are documented by historians and are unequivocal and not subject to rhetoric. While this museum offers some fantastic artifacts of historical prominence, it's failure is it's inability to simply tell events as they were and not give a Huffington Post version of events designed to forward an ideological position. While this type of attitude is hardly uncommon around these parts (open the Chicago Tribune sometime), that does not make it any less pathetic. It's not "lying" per se, just whimsical interpretations of information and convenient omission of relevant facts. They either assume their visitors are too stupid to use Google, or are hopeful that most guests similarly drink the Kool Aid. I could go on forever about how this place either glosses over or ignores significant details, but I will just jot down a few that jumped out at me during my visit.
It portrays Chicago's political history as if it were not one of the most corrupt institutions on the face of the planet ("Crook" county). Capone is not even mentioned once unless I overlooked something. And, believe it or not, it also even tries to put a semi positive spin on the administrations of the the Daley's, who's despicable behavior and decisions still impact the city to this day. Care to guess how many political officials in Cook County went to federal prison for corruption during these administrations? Look it up. Now granted this is not a pleasant part of city history to reflect upon, but it's reality, and we need to face it lest we continue to make similar mistakes in the future. Consequentially, there are numerous documentaries on Chicago's political history out there produced by the likes of the History Channel, Investigation Discovery and various others. Not surprisingly, they have a FAR less complimentary take on said history than this museum offers.
The section dealing with the CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) is also laughable in it's execution. While CHA was also corrupt, it fails to mention the cess pool of drug trafficking, murder, gang warfare, and generalized human misery that was Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor homes, and numerous other crime ridden ghettos. Many of the problems the city still faces in places like Englewood, Austin, Auburn Gresham, etc. came about due to these high rises from hell. Here again, there are numerous sources out there in both the media and academia which offer a far more historically accurate depiction of these events if you are truly interested.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea at this point as many of the exhibits follow a similar MO. This place is eerily similar in many ways to another "museum" on the history of psychiatry I toured out in LA which was ran by the Church of Scientology. In short, the world is what it is, and not what you wish it to be. This holds true for Chicago or anywhere else. We live in an information age where access to relevant data is only a mouse click away. This museum attempts to treat history as if it were contemporary politics, where anything can be spun like a record to give an intentionally dishonest narrative. This is frankly an insult to the intelligence of many of it's guests. I don't visit museums for a lesson in political agenda. Though on the other hand, I suppose this type of behavior should not come as a huge surprise from a Cook County institution. *sigh* read more